What's the difference between mulch and soil?

Mulch


Definition:

  • (n.) Half-rotten straw, or any like substance strewn on the ground, as over the roots of plants, to protect from heat, drought, etc., and to preserve moisture.
  • (v. t.) To cover or dress with mulch.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For that matter, mulching with bark, grit or slate will help keep the surface roots cooler and retain moisture in hot weather.
  • (2) Here, fruit and vegetables left unsold each day in Budgens are mulched, along with woody branches and soil, by the 20 local people who volunteer in the garden.
  • (3) The Royal Horticultural Society put out guidelines for domestic gardeners to save water, such as mulching and improving the soil by digging in large amounts of compost or other organic matter.
  • (4) Use a swoe (a flat push-and-pull hoe) to loosen the surface: this will act as a mulch – especially on heavy soils.
  • (5) In Pinjarra, a small town of 3,200 about 17km inland from Mandurah, where Hastie and Turnbull addressed a gathering of Liberal party faithful on Sunday night, Pam Squires had already mulched the political flyers she got in the mail and couldn’t remember any of the candidates’ names.
  • (6) Such techniques already exist, from terracing to prevent soil loss through erosion and flooding, minimum or zero tillage, coupled with crop rotation and the application of manure, compost or mulching.
  • (7) A single exposure of growing wheat plants to patulin can produce yield reductions similar to those observed in stubble-mulch farming.
  • (8) For interpretation we used the "relationship of excitability" as described recently by Mulch and Scherer for the thermal test.
  • (9) All those little animals and plants, he said, crushed into mulch, that thing you call oil.
  • (10) Back in Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens we were mulching, drip-watering and allowing our lawns to brown off during dry spells, just as Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place are doing here in London.
  • (11) It also worth mulching around plants to keep weeds down and water locked into the soil – grass clippings work well.
  • (12) Mulch newly planted trees and shrubs after a good watering, and choose new plants adapted to drought, such as grey-foliaged plants, sages, lavenders, santolina, or those with fat leaves which store water, such as sedums and sempervivums.
  • (13) Your body will decompose to a grey, pulpy mulch that will fertilise the soil the next generation will nonchalantly trample over on its way to the hologram shop.
  • (14) All were covered with reddish-brown mulch except for two that appeared newly dug, neither with any kind of marking and one of them presumably Tsarnaev's.
  • (15) Anything you cut down, such as hedge prunings, can be used for a mulch.
  • (16) If weeds are a problem you can modify a crop for herbicide resistance, as Monsanto has done, or you can use a combination of unglamorous but effective ground cover, mulching, soil management, rotation, weeding or even use weed crops in other constructive ways.
  • (17) Do not add small dribbles of water frequently; instead, give individual plants a good soak about once a week, and then mulch if you can.
  • (18) The presumed source of infection was old prairie hay used for mulching.
  • (19) Mulch can easily take the form of inorganic gravel or chippings, but there are many products now available.
  • (20) Applied this spring while the soil is moist, and spread evenly in a 5-10cm layer, a mulch will form a protective topping to the soil to hold the moisture in.

Soil


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To feed, as cattle or horses, in the barn or an inclosure, with fresh grass or green food cut for them, instead of sending them out to pasture; hence (such food having the effect of purging them), to purge by feeding on green food; as, to soil a horse.
  • (n.) The upper stratum of the earth; the mold, or that compound substance which furnishes nutriment to plants, or which is particularly adapted to support and nourish them.
  • (n.) Land; country.
  • (n.) Dung; faeces; compost; manure; as, night soil.
  • (v. t.) To enrich with soil or muck; to manure.
  • (n.) A marshy or miry place to which a hunted boar resorts for refuge; hence, a wet place, stream, or tract of water, sought for by other game, as deer.
  • (n.) To make dirty or unclean on the surface; to foul; to dirty; to defile; as, to soil a garment with dust.
  • (n.) To stain or mar, as with infamy or disgrace; to tarnish; to sully.
  • (v. i.) To become soiled; as, light colors soil sooner than dark ones.
  • (n.) That which soils or pollutes; a soiled place; spot; stain.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The disappearance of the herbicide, Avadex (40% diallate), from five agricultural soils (differing in either pH, carbon content, or nitrogen content), incubated under sterile and non-sterile conditions, was followed for a period of 20 weeks.
  • (2) The remaining 5 soil samples, obtained from sites that were not in close proximity to lakes, were also negative except for one that contained type B.
  • (3) One ejaculation followed by daily contact with soiled bedding taken from a male's cage did not increase pregnancy rates.
  • (4) Fourteen soil bacteriophages active against Rhizobium trifolii W19 have been studied which fall into four structural groups.
  • (5) Recoveries of these 3 herbicides added to soil, wheat, and barley samples at 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 ppm levels were between 65 and 93%.
  • (6) The hypothesis was tested that plaque, as a complex soil comprising microorganisms, cell debris, salivary deposits and other ill-defined organic and inorganic components, would be susceptible to removal by a rinse with high detersive action.
  • (7) While undoubtedly a good understanding of soil microbiology in terms of pedology exists, little is presently known about unsaturated subsoils, and aquifers.
  • (8) The behavior and effects of atmospheric emissions in soils and plants are discussed.
  • (9) The first stop in this arid place of poor farms and orchards clinging to the dry soil is Rafah, cut off by the border from its Palestinian counterpart.
  • (10) Although selenium deficiency in livestock is consequently now rare in Oregon, selenium-deficient soils and attendant selenium deficiency conditions have been reported near the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in the Northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, California, where, paradoxically, selenium toxicity in wildfowl, nesting near evaporation ponds, occurred and attracted wide attention.
  • (11) It is now recognized that dwarfism in males is frequent around the Mediterranean, where wheat is the staple of life and has been grown for 4,000 years on the same soil, thereby resulting in the depletion of zinc.
  • (12) The influence of salt mixtures consisting of Ca(H2PO4)2, trace elements, CaSO4, CaCO3, Na2CO3, NaCl and K2SO4 in different combinations on the nitrifying power, evolution of carbon dioxide and the total number of bacteria was studied in arid soils (sandy and alluvial) and semi-humid ones (chernozem and rendzina).
  • (13) High concentrations of mercury, cadmium, and lead have also been observed in urban soils.
  • (14) Two long-term tillage studies on fine-textured, clay loam soils were sampled in July and November 1977 following 2 years of limited rainfall.
  • (15) Adult Persian lime trees grafted on Citrus macrophylla and C. volkameriana were used, planted on a groundwater-affected red ferrilytic soil in the La Habana Province.
  • (16) Recent reports incriminating Acanthamoeba, a small free-living amoeba, wide-spread in environmental soils and waters, in acanthamoebic keratitis cases wearing soft contact lenses, drew attention to cleaning solutions for contact lenses.
  • (17) An enzyme (nitrilase) that converts the herbicide bromoxynil (3,5-dibromo-4-hydroxybenzonitrile) to its metabolite 3,5-dibromo-4-hydroxybenzoic acid was shown to be plasmid encoded in the natural soil isolate Klebsiella ozaenae.
  • (18) Forty soil samples from different desert localities in Kuwait were surveyed for keratinophilic and geophilic dermatophytic fungi.
  • (19) The well drained soils of the Suiá--Missu forest are very uniform, deep latosols (oxisols) of very dystrophic nature with pH (in water) between 4.0 and 5.0 (see table 2, p. 203).
  • (20) To reduce the risks posed by the hazard, the report recommends that a management plan be created to determine the level of soil contamination and for managing excavated soil, and to decommission disused septic tanks to prevent the spread of contamination.